Book Review: Jane Eyre

Classics. Those books that have lasted centuries, only to be left on the bookshelves of well meaning readers, unopened, unexplored. The shelves in my room hold many of these works of art, most of them as yet unread.

However, during the week of the neck injury awhile ago, I needed something to entertain me (other than Netflix - one can only take so much bad television). So I decided to tackle one of the books that I had been putting off for much too long. I figured my inability to move would provide motivation to actually finish the venture this time.

I chose Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte and completed about half of it before I was up and moving again. It happens to be quite a thick book though, and it took me a few more weeks of regular life to reach the end.

Miss Bronte's protagonist, Jane, is a plain little girl at the opening of the story. Her life, young as she is, is already marked with suffering. Jane is an orphan, entrusted to the care of a guardian who does not love her. To get rid of the troublesome child, Jane is sent to a charity school where she receives an education and eventually ventures out into the world on her own. Life does not get any easier though, as she begins finding her way in the world, and Jane is left to face many difficult situations which try her courage, morality, and love.

As is often the case with old books ("classics"), I found Jane Eyre to be much more gripping and intriguing than I expected. The story is compelling and well thought out. Jane is a character who takes some getting used to, but is easy to grow to love. She is surrounded by a supporting cast with interesting backgrounds who leave their mark on the girl. Her tale is told by a woman with an excellent vocabulary and skill in crafting sentences.

I appreciated the moral questions raised by Bronte and how they were answered. As someone who loves to read, I'm finding it tragically and increasingly difficult to find books written in the recent past with clean language, themes, and choices. Jane Eyre was a breath of fresh air in that regard. Jane had to make terrible decisions, but she was strong and chose well. Emotion did not dictate the choices in her life - sound judgement and convictions did.

Though quite long, Jane Eyre was worth the read. I kept coming back to find out what would happen to the heroine and how she would respond throughout the weeks it took me to finish the book. Jane has left an impression on me, and, I have to say, I'm sorry the story's over.

-Kira

Book Review: Crazy Love

There's nothing quite like a book that makes you take a good hard look at yourself. Crazy Love is one of those books.

I mentioned Crazy Love a few weeks ago in a different post before I had finished reading it. Now that I'm done, I had to review it because I absolutely loved it.

Francis Chan's Crazy Love is about how incredibly out of this world God's love for us is. It comes through in His every action - from salvation to the creation of caterpillars. Our sin left us with no claim to His love, but He poured it over us anyway. By the bucket full. When we stop and actually try to fathom for a moment the depth of this love, we are left with no other reaction than to pour out our lives in service to Christ.

We have no reason to fear death, no reason to conform to this world, no reason to worry or stress or be caught up with ourselves. This life is about God, even though we're the ones living it. Chan makes that incredibly clear in his book.

Crazy Love is not overly eloquent or complicated. While I usually enjoy finer language in a book, Chan made his point simple and I appreciate that in this case. Rather than detracting from the book, the simplicity of the writing allowed me to focus on the message and how it applies to me.

It took me awhile to reach the point spiritually where I can see the benefit of conviction when I first feel it, rather than wanting to run in the other direction, toward complacency. It has led to a deeper appreciation of books like Crazy Love and how God uses them in my life. Francis Chan is not shy about saying that the church as a whole is not following God completely. But he doesn't just leave it there. In "A Conversation With Francis Chan" at the end of the book, Chan stresses that he's not attacking the church. Rather, he loves the church and wants to urge her to follow Christ's calling.

"I'm not coming up with anything new. I'm calling people to go back to the way it was. I'm not bashing the church. I'm loving it." (Crazy Love, pg 180)

Over all, Crazy Love was a convicting and, more importantly, encouraging read. It has led me to examine my own life and walk with God and to spend more time focusing on Him.

-Kira

You can find Francis Chan on his blog: crazylove.org

And his Crazy Love website: crazylovebook.com

On Death

So I've been reading a lot about death the last couple days. Not intentionally. It's just happened to come up in a couple books I'm working through this week.

This has resulted in my thinking about death. And the time before death. And how that time should be spent. You know, now that I think about it, this reminds me of one of my semi-recent posts: Borrowed Time.

Anyway, back to today. Let me start by giving you a sampling of what I've been reading and then tell you what's running through my very scattered brain.

The first book is Meditations by the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius. No, I didn't just pick it up because the cover looks cool - it's for school. To be honest though, I don't totally dread reading it. Aurelius isn't all that boring.

Meditations is a book of personal thoughts, resolutions, and observations of the world from the worldview of a Stoic philosopher/emperor shortly after the time of Jesus. Aurelius' goal was to live a virtuous and moral life. Here are his thoughts on death:

Death: something like birth, a natural mystery, elements that split and recombine.

Not an embarrassing thing. Not an offense to reason, or our nature.
(Meditations, Book 4)

People who are excited by posthumous fame forget that the people who remember them will soon die too. And those after them in turn. Until their memory, passed from one to another like a candle flame, gutters and goes out.

But suppose that those who remembered you were immortal and your memory undying. What good would it do you? And I don't just mean when you're dead, but in your own lifetime. What use is praise, except to make your lifestyle a little more comfortable?
(Meditations, Book 4)

Those two excerpts basically cover Aurelius' views on death as told in his Meditations. According to him, death is not something to be feared and there is absolutely no use in trying to get people to remember you and your fame.

The second book I've been reading this week that brought up the subject of death when I least expected it is Crazy Love by Francis Chan. I'm not very far into it yet, but his perspective on death and "posthumous fame" still gave me pause.

In about fifty years (give or take a couple of decades), no one will remember you. Everyone you know will be dead. Certainly no one will care what job you had, what car you drove, what school you attended, or what clothes you wore. This can be terrifying or reassuring, or maybe a mix of both.
(Crazy Love, ch 2)

That's pretty straightforward. The chapter containing these sentences is about how everything and every time is about God - including the miniscule piece of eternity that our lives occupy.

Reading these books at the same time has left me thinking a lot about death, as I mentioned before. But it hasn't been depressing. In fact, the result of all my meditation on death has been that I've been thinking about life a lot. Particularly my life. It may be an easy question, but who is my life supposed to glorify?

Now, Aurelius was not a Christian. In fact, even though his book is full of virtues and morals, he heavily persecuted the Christians. It was a crime not to worship Caesar and guess who the Christians didn't worship? His answer is that your life isn't really meant to glorify anyone. You go about your business, try to do the right things, and eventually die.

Francis Chan on the other hand is a pastor. He is so passionate about his faith. So his answer is that our lives are supposed to glorify God - even though they are incredibly short in light of eternity. He uses the illustration of all of us being extras in a movie about God to make his point.

We have only our two-fifths-of-a-second-long scene to live. I don't know about you, but I want my two-fifths of a second to be about my making much of God. First Corinthians 10:31 says, "So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God." That is what each of our two-fifths of a second is about.
(Crazy Love, ch 2)

Question: Who is my life supposed to glorify?
Answer: God.

Harder Question: Who does my life glorify?
Harder Answer: Usually me.

It's not natural to instantly give God the glory or to act in every little thing in a way that honors Him. But that's what we've got to strive to do. God is too great and wonderful for us to make this about us! Even Aurelius realized that fame and glory don't actually do us any good. So if they're not going to help us out anyway, we may as well make our lives about God, right?

But that's not how it's supposed to work either. We don't just glorify God because our glory won't last. Our lives should be lived as a response to everything He's done for us. For me, that includes salvation, putting me in the beautiful mountains of Virginia, piecing together my family so that I understand His picture of adoption, letting me be homeschooled, and tons and tons of other stuff. What does it mean for you?

When I think about all the stuff God has given me in my life that I don't deserve, it makes me want to live for Him. Yes, I still mess up. All. The. Time. But His grace means I can try again. I don't have to stay down.

I'm going to leave you with a quote from Francis Chan, because he said it well.

The point of your life is to point to Him. Whatever you are doing, God wants to be glorified, because this whole thing is His. It is His movie, His world, His gift.
(Crazy Love, ch 2)

-Kira

Book Review: This Changes Everything

I recently had the privilege of reading the book This Changes Everything: How the gospel transforms the teen years by Jaquelle Crowe for free in order to review it. And let me tell you, I loved it!

I had expected to enjoy the book since it was written for teens about living for Christ. I trusted the author, having read her articles before, and figured her first book would be good as well. So I was surprised at what an impact it made on me.

Jaquelle's book just came out today (I got it early - yay! ;) and I would highly recommend you go read it.

This Changes Everything is about how we, as teenagers, should be living our lives for Christ right now. We don't have to (and should not) wait until we're older. We are just as much God's people now as we will be in two or three or five years. We are not exempt from following God's Word because of our age and Jaquelle wants to make sure we know it.

The book is written very simply, not because teens need it that way, but because it can be stated that way. No one needs big words to understand that we are to lay aside everything tearing us away from Christ and live only and fully for Him.

That being said, I would not only recommend this book to teens, but to everyone else walking with Christ as well. Teens aren't the only ones who need reminders of these things. Even though Jaquelle is talking mainly to teenagers, everything she says applies equally to all believers. We are all called to a relationship with God and to go against the norms of culture.

If you're interested, you can find This Changes Everything on Amazon and Crossway and I'm sure some other places too.

I cannot tell you how wonderfully Jaquelle shows that the gospel does, in fact, change everything in our lives.

-Kira

Write.

The perusal of the teen sections of our local libraries and bookstores has become increasingly depressing. Every third book is a convoluted romance and the ones in between contain vampires, violence, and poor writing.

What happened to all the good books?

I’ve always been an avid reader and realizing the depravity of the books offered to people my age was quite a shock. How am I supposed to find something good, clean, and wholesome to read in the midst of all of this - for lack of a better word - garbage?

Walking through the teen section of my library only renews my longing for something more. Why can’t anyone write something good for teenagers?

Wait a minute.

Why can’t I write something good for teenagers?

Writing is also a passion of mine and recently, I figured out why. I want to provide excellent things for people to read. I want not only excellent stories, but excellent characters, excellent words, and excellent morals.

I know the kind of book I want, so why don’t I write it? There are others like me out there - sick of the sin dripping through all the dust jackets encasing the stories aimed at people our age. I’m not the only one feeling the evil thrown at me all the time.

“Be the change you want to see in the world.” Kind of a cheesy quote, once you’ve heard it enough times. But it’s also a convicting one. If we want something different, let’s make it.

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Philippians 4:8

What we read shapes what we think and God tells us exactly what kind of thing we’re supposed to be thinking. It’s not the kind of thing given to us from media (including books) on a regular basis.

So why don’t we start creating our own books to read? Clean books. True books. God-honoring books.

Don’t get me wrong - it’s going to be a long process. I hear it’s a lot of work to get a book published and it won’t happen overnight.

But will you work with me? All of you who desperately want to see their name on the spine of a story, will you join me in changing what’s given to young readers everywhere?

The only way to do that is to write. Pick up your pen, open your laptop, put ink in your quill. Work on your craft. Work bit by bit. Day by day. And maybe, someday, we’ll see our names there, in little letters, below a title we worked so hard to create. And when our brothers and sisters in Christ open the story we brought into the world, they’ll read new things. Encouraging things. Hard things. But good things.

It’s not going to be easy. But that’s kind of the point, isn’t it? We want good things to read. Let’s go make them.

-Kira

Booked

Hello everybody! I managed to find a spare minute when there was no school that I could really do (though plenty left, I assure you :D) to write an update.

But it's not so much an update as another introduction.

My last post, Introducing Following Orders!, was all about posting the book I'm writing on here. By the way, I'm nearing the end - yay! It was extremely jumbled up and I forgot to mention where you can even read the book, but it is all better now because...

I am taking down the first chapter of Following Orders!

If you were planning on reading it, please don't panic yet!

In addition to this change, I have started another blog exclusively for posting books. You can read any and all books that I post on that blog - Booked. This is not to make things crazier and more insane but to clean things up so that this blog can stay straightforward and simple.

At the publication of this post, there is only one post over on Booked, but it explains basically how I'm thinking things are going to work. I won't rewrite it all here, but you can go read all of that if you're interested. As always, suggestions and ideas are more than welcome.

The web address (correct terminology?) is: chaptersandscenes.blogspot.com. Now I need to go hunt out some more work that I can do. Bye!

-Kira

Introducing Following Orders!

If it's not obvious yet, I love to write. So much so, that I sincerely hope to be an author in the near future. I won't delve into how I define "author" right now because I know some people say you only have to write a book and others say you have to be published and on and on... Just know that I plan to be one.

As part of fine tuning my writing skills, my parents are allowing me to do a writing curriculum this year in which I get to write a novel. That's right - a whole novel. I'm so happy!!!

I wrote my first full novel last November as part of National Novel Writing Month and it's a little sloppy because of the speed and I haven't had time to edit it yet. I'm hoping to do something with it though - potentially post it on here after Following Orders. But we will see how this goes first.

So anyway, because of busy-ness and high school and blah blah blah, I haven't really been posting with any sort of consistency or speed - it's been a month and a half since my last post. By publishing my novel on here, I not only solve the no-posting problem, I also can test it out and see how it goes. I'm warning you right now, so don't say I didn't: if you don't feel like being a guinea pig for a very naive writer who has not really done a whole lot of editing on this round, don't read this novel. Got it? Good.

Now for those of you who are interested in being tested upon and asked relentlessly "What do you think? No, really?" keep reading. If you do decide to take this difficult road, please do not hesitate to tell me what you think! Even if you think that it was the worst thing you have ever read in your life and you'll never read anything I write ever again. I seriously want to know and it helps with editing too. :D

I'm not going to put a synopsis here because there's a little bit of one over in front of the first chapter so you can know a little bit of what you might be getting yourself into.

In short, if you are interested in reading Following Orders, please do. This is sort of an experiment because I've never done anything like post a really long story on here before. I think the longest I did was three parts...? Anyway, after the posts on "To Write or Not to Write: Broken" a few people asked me for the rest of it. Full disclosure, I do not have the rest of it. It's not written. I will tell you that I am interested in maybe returning to the idea and refreshing the plot but it is way back in line. Like, way, way, way back.

Bunny trail over.

This will be a full novel - all of it on here and all of it written. It tends to get finished more when it's assigned for school. :D So I hope you like it!

-Kira

P.S. I'm just going to give full credit to Mommy for this idea. I never would have thought to post a novel on here if she hadn't suggested it. And I love the idea! Thanks Mommy!

Counted Worthy: A New Christian Novel With A Story Worth Reading

  Leah E. Good is homeschooler, now homeschooling college. She wrote the book Counted Worthy and self-published after being fully funded by Kickstarter in just a few days. I have just recently finished reading Counted Worthy, and I would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a book of moderate length with a Christian theme that is not too overbearing and pretentious.

The main character, Heather Stone, is trying to do what's right, but is faced with difficult decisions that have dire consequences again and again. She doesn't want to repeat the past, yet she does want to follow God's will for her life. This all weaves its way into an intriguing and fast-paced story that will suck you in right from the start.

I believe that Leah Good has written a wonderful book that should (and will) be read over and over again and I highly encourage doing so.

Every generation must discover its own storyweavers. Leah Good is one of ours and we are fortunate. Counted Worthy is a thrilling work of inspirational fiction that perfectly complements the message of Do Hard Things. Grab a copy for yourself, grab a copy for a friend, and help spread the word about this phenomenal debut. Counted Worthy belongs in the hands of every Christian teen and story lover in the country. It’s that good. –Brett Harris, bestselling author of Do Hard Things

The Author - Leah E. Good

I definitely believe Counted Worthy is worth reading and telling others about. I also believe that Leah has shown to the world that she is a hardworking and talented author and could be added to the list of Who I Look Up To. Since reading her blog and book, I have often thought, How cool is that? I would love to do just what she did! Also, random fact, her novel inspired me to start writing another story and this one I hope to follow through with (yeah, right, I know). I truly enjoyed this story and I hope anyone who gets the chance to read it enjoys it just as much.

Radical. Intense. Compelling. Leah Good’s dystopian novel, Counted Worthy, powerfully embodies the message that today’s young people need to hear: the Reason we have to die to self, pursue the impossible, and when all else fails, to stand. This is the message that has the potential to turn a generation of complacency into a generation of inspiration. –Melody van Achterberg, reader

You can find Leah on her blog, Leah's Bookshelf. I highly encourage you to do so.

-Kira

Help!

Please help me!

In getting ready for our trip to Germany,  I am looking for some books to read on our long flights and possible long layovers. (Daddy and I had one layover in April that was seven hours long. It took forever!) If there are any good books that you have read and would recommend to a thirteen  year old girl (turning fourteen on the trip!) I would really appreciate some suggestions. However, I would prefer ones that I could obtain on a kindle as suitcase space and weight is limited for the plane :)

Thanks for the help. I am so excited!

-Kira